Hillary is now blaming the married women

[funinspace]

Here: https://ijr.com/2018/03/1074945-hil...f1kg&_hsmi=61310911&utm_campaign=Conservative Daily&utm_content=61310911&utm_medium=email&utm_source=hs_email

Here's what she said:

“[Democrats] do not do well with white men, and we don't do well with married, white women. And part of that is an identification with the Republican Party and a sort of ongoing pressure to vote the way that your husband, your boss, your son, whoever, believes you should.”

So with all that said, here is my question to anyone who might know an answer. How are the democrats going to move forward and beat the Republicans if they don't at least put their best foot forward and try to succeed with men and white married women?

53% of white women voted for a pussy-grabber. How typical of you to try and spin this into an "attack" on "married women," but we expect no less from people who have willingly plunged their heads into the propaganda trough. Let me guess, you're going to cry that I am committing "white genocide" by failing to "admit" that this was a racist attack on white people by Hillary Clinton?

Why do you wallow in 'identity politics'

HRC had the largest gender gap since they started tracking it:
http://fortune.com/2016/11/09/hillary-clinton-election-gender-gap/

According to the Associated Press, Clinton’s gender gap—the difference between the number of men who voted for her and the number of women who voted for her—hit 13 percentage points. That’s the single largest such gap since the exit poll surveys began in 1972. Al Gore, another Democrat, was the only other candidate to come close to that divide; his was 12 percentage points when he lost the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

But (here's my "everything would be fine if everyone was like me" screed) glosses over a huge number of people who voted for her despite a personal revulsion, because ... Trump.

It doesn’t gloss over anything. Asserting that there was a “huge number” does not mean that there was in fact a statistically large or relevant number. When you’re talking about something like, out of 66 million people, 4 million said, “I held my nose and voted against Trump, but that wasn’t a vote for Hillary” it’s just not a significant point. Significant, as in, qualifies as high on the list of what happened in a meaningful, post-mortem manner.

It contributes to the post mortem, of course, but every election has a certain percentage of people who didn’t like their candidate, but voted for them because they hated the opposition candidate more, but if you tell me 4 people out of 66 did something (that’s the percentage of Bernie supporters who potentially did as you suggest compared to the total number of voters whose vote for Hillary was counted) that doesn’t have much weight in regard to an understanding of why the majority of the 68 did (or did not) do something.

And when you factor in the twenty to forty million other voters who intended to vote for Hillary, but for various nefarious reasons did not end up casting a ballot and/or had their ballots disavowed—or, as I noted before that no one seems to ever factor in, didn’t vote because they believed Hillary was a lock, so why bother—the actual numbers are much much larger.

am astounded to this day that there are more than a half dozen people on this continent who can't look at and listen to that orange moron for 30 seconds, and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he'd be the worst president in American history by a YUUUUGE margin. It's like 100+ million Americans suddenly went fully autistic. WTF.

No, it was really more like 55,000 in key electoral counties. Republicans vote Republican. Your personal incredulity (and mine) aside, it’s not a shock that Trump got the numbers he got, particularly in light of all of the issues I noted that were at play in the election. We can’t believe it, but that’s not a valid yard stick.

 

[SimpleDon]

I don't know how the Democrats can forge a coalition that can counter the Republicans' appeal with white voters. I don't understand racism. I don't understand the fear of foreigners. I don't understand the denial of science and of facts. I don't understand the appeal of religion and other fantasies. I don't understand fighting progress. I don't understand living in fear. I don't understand the appeal of authoritarianism. These things to me are the opposite of what makes America Great.

Associating all that with "white voters" is why the Democrats will continue to lose. Instead, how about a focus on the economy, publicly funded education, universal health care, wealth disparity (the 99%), etc? Issues the vast majority of your citizens agree with the Democrats on? Demonizing white people isn't going to win you their votes. Appealing to them as fellow human beings with many of the same interests as everybody else will.

I didn't associate those things with white voters, I associated them with the Republicans. The Republican party weaponized these things as not only acceptable beliefs but as examples of how the liberals and elitists were suppressing everyone else. They used these things to divide the country. The blue dog, leadership council, Clinton Democrats actually helped the Republicans by trying to box the Republicans into a corner to appeal to the more moderate, right of center Republicans. All that the blue dogs did was to help validate these beliefs and to push the Republicans even further to the right.

I don't understand racism, xenophobia, the belief in fantasies like religion, the fear of progress and change, or science denial and I don't know how to counter them. They are baseless and irrational. I have never been burdened with any of them. What I do understand is the dangers of the extremes of the political spectrum, the extremes of both the right and the left. In the 1960's and 1970's the US was threatened with the extremes of the left. However, since then we are threatened with the extremes of the right.

I also understand economics and that it is the reason that the Republicans did all of this. Why they intentionally cleaved the country apart, why they took advantage of conservatives and why they used fear to make more people into conservatives, to gain the raw policial power they needed to take control of the government to use it to increase income and wealth inequality in favor of the already rich.

I agree with your crusade against identity politics. Racism is the original and is still the worse form of identity politics. The Republicans made a calculated decision to appeal to the Southern racists to gain political power. This, to me, is worse than if they were racists themselves.

Hillary had an extensive list of policy proposals and it did little good against the lying showman.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

I agree with your crusade against identity politics. Racism is the original and is still the worse form of identity politics.

Yes, it absolutely is.

The Republicans made a calculated decision to appeal to the Southern racists to gain political power. This, to me, is worse than if they were racists themselves.

I agree here too.

Hillary had an extensive list of policy proposals and it did little good against the lying showman.

Hillary played into identity politics far more than she should have and it hurt her. As people have said above, identity politics wins elections for Republicans (as they are a party of division) but loses elections for Democrats (as they are supposed to the the party of the common folk united).

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

You may feel that way (as may others), but, again, the numbers demonstrate that the slogan worked.

It didn't really work though, did it?

Well, she won the only vote that exists; the popular vote. So, yes, it worked. The EC is a different matter.

It is useless, under present rules, to run up the score in NY or CA while losing MI, WI, PA, FL.

It depends on what we’re talking about. Are we talking about measuring the political leanings of the entire nation? Then the vote is the only thing that matters. I’m going to stop using the phrase “popular vote” because there is no other form of vote. As I noted previously, the EC no longer votes; they are just a rubber stamp (for all but two states, so, rubber stamp).

Are we talking about an EC strategy and how it failed Hillary? Then we’re talking about focusing exclusively on 55,000 votes, a .02% vote differential in just three key states and how that may have happened.

The evidence points to a combination of racism (small percentage of under-educated white Dems leaning to Trump due to their hatred of Obama and belief that whites are superior so they voted for Trump’s race-baiting); sexism (small percentage of Dem voters leaning to Trump because they didn’t think a woman should be President); Bernie bros (small percentage of Dem voters leaning to Trump because they bought the equivocation lie that Hilary is just a Republican in Dem’s clothing); the Comey Effect (and the measurable impact it had on undecided voters swinging either to Trump or to just not vote); the Apathy Effect (the fact that these were blue states thought to be a “lock” for Hillary so why bother going out and standing in line, etc); Election Fraud tactics (the impact of voter ID laws; changes to voting schedules and closing of voting stations; gerrymandering; etc); and the as yet to be determined influence of the Russian attack.

Those are the primary reasons why an otherwise statistically non-existent anomaly resulted in Hillary being denied the Presidency in a scenario that Nate Silver only gave a 10% chance of occurring.

Yes, personality is also a factor, of course, but on the scale of 1 to relevant, it’s about a 2. This narrative, however, has still not gone away and always seems be brought up (primarily by Bernie supporters) as if it was a significant factor, but the facts say other.

The truth is, Hillary was a bad candidate

Demonstrably disproven by the fact that she won the election. She lost the Presidency, but won the vote. That—alone—disproves such a contention, since that is the only possible metric available to us.

You can’t point to a .02% unprecedented anomaly in just three states and declare what the “truth” is about Hillary. That’s just intellectually lazy. There were many reasons that all combined into what happened, but, again the vote is the one that tells us what America as a whole wanted and that was—unquestionably—Hillary Clinton.

 

[laughing dog]

Hillary played into identity politics far more than she should have and it hurt her. As people have said above, identity politics wins elections for Republicans (as they are a party of division) but loses elections for Democrats (as they are supposed to the the party of the common folk united).

"Common folk united" is an identity. You are claiming she played into the wrong identity politics.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

I have to say that I am a bit flummoxed. Are you arguing that percentages or per-capita data is less relevant that a raw number?

I was arguing the fact that, just because one is born does not correlate to whether or not that person votes and/or why that person voted as they did; i.e., their motivation, which, again, is the only thing that is important in a post-mortem. Hillary Clinton motivated the second largest number of people in US history to actually get out and vote for her (second only to Obama, the remaining record holder).

In 2016, HRC garnered 65.85 million votes, or 48.2% of the total vote

Total vote counted.

with 55.7% of the voting age population turning out.

Irrelevant. Being eligible to vote (just as with being registered to vote) does not just automatically correlate to actually voting. If it did, then everyone who is of voting age would not only register, they would vote.

To suggest that the percentage of the voting age population is less relevant than the turn out number

Careful with the straw...

would make HRC’s turnout somehow more relevant than LBJ’s huge win in 1964, as he only got 43.1 million votes. Yet, LBJ crushed Barry Goldwater garnering 61.1% of the vote

Total votes counted.

(and 486 EC votes), with a huge 61.9% of the voting age population turning out to vote. Why did LBJ get 22 million less votes than HRC, yet still crush Goldwater?

You are treating the total voting age population as if it were a 100% certainty to vote--discounting all manner of esoteric mitigating factors in the process (e.g., cultural zeitgeist and the relative attitudes/access to voting; the number of registered voters as opposed to those of age but haven't registered; etc)--and then measuring success only against the negative of that 100% certainty. There is no such certainty, so it is misleading to calculate against such an assumption. All it represents is potential and in regard to potential, that is open ended.

Here, in 1964 there were evidently 114 million people of voting age. LBJ managed to motivate 43 million of those potential voters to get off their asses and make sure their votes counted. In 2016, there were 230 million. HRC managed to motivate 65 million of those potential voters.

In both instances, there were many more potential votes for either candidate to garner. Iow, the potential to get more votes was equal. Please read that carefully. I'm not saying the number of potential votes was equal; I'm saying that the ability to get more votes than they actually got was a present condition in both elections. Clear?

So, iow, LBJ could have garnered 66 million votes (or 68 or 98 for that matter), just as Hillary could have garnered more too (and by several measures did on the order of some 20-40 million more that were intended but for various reasons never counted or placed). They both had the same potential to garner more votes than they actually did. Follow?

What matters is whether or not they both had the ability--the capacity--to get more votes than they did, because voting is not a certainty nor a mere measure of population growth. You could have ten billion people, but only five decide to actually vote for you. Likewise, you could have ten people, but only five decide to actually vote for you. The number of potential voters in either scenario, however, does not tell us anything about why the number of people who voted for you voted for you.

I’m not sure why you are quibbling over HRC’s popular vote win.

Because it is the true measure of the political leaning of the American people as a whole and proves that there was no ideological shift to the right (as so many on the right and a few on the left keep trying to assert) as well as the fact that Hillary Clinton was the best candidate for the Dems. She won the election (but lost the Presidency due to a complicated and unprecedented series of events).

There literally is no better measure of whether or not you are the best candidate if you win the vote. Again, the complexities of the EC that I have outlined are a separate matter.

Let's put it this way, if you and I are trying to determine who is the faster runner and we run a foot race and I beat you by three minutes, then I am the fastest runner between the two of us, yes? As a measure of who is the fastest runner, the only thing that would matter is that fact. If I then am not given the blue ribbon, because my socks were a faded color just slightly off from regulations, does that change in any fundamental way the fact that I am still the faster runner?

Again, the question is, what are we trying to measure? If all you care about is who got the blue ribbon (and not how), then I have nothing to say to you and I hope your days are happy and fine. If you care about who the faster runner is, then it is no longer about the blue ribbon in this particular foot race.

It is a grave mistake to dismiss Trump as a “buffoon” and frankly intellectually lazy. I don’t mean that as a slight; he IS a buffoon. To us. We see through him. But a very very very tiny percentage of primarily white voters in targeted blue counties did not, but that tiny .02% of America—and the roughly 25% of Americans as a whole—that actively voted for Trump does not in any way equate to a sea change in America’s ideological stance. Which is my point.

And my point was that HRC wasn’t facing some sort of super villain opponent that had magical powers.

Wasn't she? She was facing the unprecedented power of a new medium, cyber-offensive from Russia; the GOP attack machine (that had been in full operation against her nonstop for the past thirty years at least); the insidiousness of racism that had nothing to do with her and the impossible to combat sexism that had everything to do with her at the same time it ultimately had nothing to do with her personally (or her policies); and she was facing the "super villainy" of an opponent that was allowed to campaign unfettered and unchallenged because Hillary was forced to contend with a zombie civil war attack from the Sanders campaign--that was likewise Russian fueled--and wasted extremely valuable time and money and focus away from the nonstop attacks Trump was pumping out as well.

In spite of ALL of that she also had to contend with the more "normal" Republican election fraud tactics that seem almost quaint in comparison and yet still managed to win the vote in a record setting manner.

HRC needs to own up to some of her own failures and foibles

No, she doesn't (any more than anyone does in life in general). She won. That means she does not have to answer to anyone. Again, can she answer for racism? Can she answer for the Comey effect? Can she answer for the as yet undetermined impact of Russian interference on such a tiny percentage of voters in key, isolated counties?

YOU may have personally disliked her, but you aren't relevant in regard to what we're talking about. Factoring in the numbers of intended voters and we're talking about someone who would have had closer to some 80-90 million votes, but even without those estimates, the final numbers conclusively prove that she was the faster runner. She just didn't get the blue ribbon because of her socks. Oversimplified, but justifiable to make the point.

Let's put it this way, if the .02% in the three states had voted for Hillary--as expected by almost everyone--then we would never be having any such conversation and no one would ever be talking about anything she did (or did not do). It simply would have been a win and done. Yet nothing is fundamentally different other than a minuscule percentage swing. Again, a cough could provoke such a swing.

Or, let's put it this way. HRC won the vote, but lost the Presidency. Trump won the presidency, but lost the vote. Which of these measure who the People as a whole wanted to be President?

What I said above was simply about the slogan, not a detailed dissecting of why she lost. It was a stupid slogan, and a minor reflection of the machinations of HRC and her campaign.

In your opinion. I, otoh--and many many millions of others--had no problem with it. But as a significant factor in her not being POTUS? Not relevant.

 

[funinspace]

I was arguing the fact that, just because one is born does not correlate to whether or not that person votes and/or why that person voted as they did; i.e., their motivation, which, again, is the only thing that is important in a post-mortem. Hillary Clinton motivated the second largest number of people in US history to actually get out and vote for her (second only to Obama, the remaining record holder).



Total vote counted.

with 55.7% of the voting age population turning out.

Irrelevant. Being eligible to vote (just as with being registered to vote) does not just automatically correlate to actually voting. If it did, then everyone who is of voting age would not only register, they would vote.

To suggest that the percentage of the voting age population is less relevant than the turn out number

Careful with the straw...

would make HRC’s turnout somehow more relevant than LBJ’s huge win in 1964, as he only got 43.1 million votes. Yet, LBJ crushed Barry Goldwater garnering 61.1% of the vote

Total votes counted.

(and 486 EC votes), with a huge 61.9% of the voting age population turning out to vote. Why did LBJ get 22 million less votes than HRC, yet still crush Goldwater?

You are treating the total voting age population as if it were a 100% certainty to vote--discounting all manner of esoteric mitigating factors in the process (e.g., cultural zeitgeist and the relative attitudes/access to voting; the number of registered voters as opposed to those of age but haven't registered; etc)--and then measuring success only against the negative of that 100% certainty. There is no such certainty, so it is misleading to calculate against such an assumption.

Here, in 1964 there were evidently 114 million people of voting age. LBJ managed to motivate 43 million of those potential voters to get off their asses and make sure their votes counted. In 2016, there were 230 million. HRC managed to motivate 65 million of those potential voters.

In both instances, there were many more potential votes for either candidate to garner. Iow, LBJ could have garnered 66 million (or 68 or 98 etc), just as Hillary could have garnered more too (and by several measures did on the order of some 20-40 million more that were intended but for various reasons never counted or placed).

Yeah, I know you hate percentages...by your numbers LBJ convinced 37.7% of the people to come vote for him, whereas HRC convinced 28% of the voters to vote for her...but have fun with your big 'numbers are important' analysis, as obviously neither of us is getting thru to the other...

I’m not sure why you are quibbling over HRC’s popular vote win.

Because it is the true measure of the political leaning of the American people as a whole and proves that there was no ideological shift to the right (as so many on the right and a few on the left keep trying to assert) as well as the fact that Hillary Clinton was the best candidate for the Dems. She won the election (but lost the Presidency due to a complicated and unprecedented series of events).

There literally is no better measure of whether or not you are the best candidate if you win the vote.

That is all nice, so let me know when you fix the US Constitution.

It is a grave mistake to dismiss Trump as a “buffoon” and frankly intellectually lazy. I don’t mean that as a slight; he IS a buffoon. To us. We see through him. But a very very very tiny percentage of primarily white voters in targeted blue counties did not, but that tiny .02% of America—and the roughly 25% of Americans as a whole—that actively voted for Trump does not in any way equate to a sea change in America’s ideological stance. Which is my point.

And my point was that HRC wasn’t facing some sort of super villain opponent that had magical powers.

Wasn't she? She was facing the unprecedented power of a new medium, cyber-offensive from Russia; the GOP attack machine (that had been in full operation against her nonstop for the past thirty years at least); the insidiousness of racism that had nothing to do with her and the impossible to combat sexism that had everything to do with her at the same time it ultimately had nothing to do with her personally (or her policies); and she was facing the "super villainy" of an opponent that was allowed to campaign unfettered and unchallenged because Hillary was forced to contend with a zombie civil war attack from the Sanders campaign--that was likewise Russian fueled--and wasted extremely valuable time and money and focus away from the nonstop attacks Trump was pumping out as well.

IMPOV, she wasn't. And it is interesting that you have yet point out anything that is of HRC's own making...

Let's put it this way, if the .02% in the three states had voted for Hillary--as expected by almost everyone--then we would never be having any such conversation and no one would ever be talking about anything she did (or did not do). It simply would have been a win and done. Yet nothing is fundamentally different other than a minuscule percentage swing. Again, a cough could provoke such a swing.

As you have tossed this numeric around more than a few times, could explain where this ‘0.02% vote differential’ percentage derives from, as I’m not figuring out the math behind it?

 

[RVonse]

https://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/

Well maybe it’s because he’s said (correctly) that the Clintons’ support of NAFTA helped to destroy the industrial states of the Upper Midwest. Trump is going to hammer Clinton on this and her support of TPP and other trade policies that have royally screwed the people of these four states. When Trump stood in the shadow of a Ford Motor factory during the Michigan primary, he threatened the corporation that if they did indeed go ahead with their planned closure of that factory and move it to Mexico, he would slap a 35% tariff on any Mexican-built cars shipped back to the United States. It was sweet, sweet music to the ears of the working class of Michigan, and when he tossed in his threat to Apple that he would force them to stop making their iPhones in China and build them here in America, well, hearts swooned and Trump walked away with a big victory that should have gone to the governor next-door, John Kasich.

From Green Bay to Pittsburgh, this, my friends, is the middle of England – broken, depressed, struggling, the smokestacks strewn across the countryside with the carcass of what we use to call the Middle Class. Angry, embittered working (and nonworking) people who were lied to by the trickle-down of Reagan and abandoned by Democrats who still try to talk a good line but are really just looking forward to rub one out with a lobbyist from Goldman Sachs who’ll write them nice big check before leaving the room. What happened in the UK with Brexit is going to happen here. Elmer Gantry shows up looking like Boris Johnson and just says whatever shit he can make up to convince the masses that this is their chance! To stick to ALL of them, all who wrecked their American Dream! And now The Outsider, Donald Trump, has arrived to clean house! You don’t have to agree with him! You don’t even have to like him! He is your personal Molotov cocktail to throw right into the center of the bastards who did this to you! SEND A MESSAGE! TRUMP IS YOUR MESSENGER!

And this is where the math comes in. In 2012, Mitt Romney lost by 64 electoral votes. Add up the electoral votes cast by Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It’s 64. All Trump needs to do to win is to carry, as he’s expected to do, the swath of traditional red states from Idaho to Georgia (states that’ll never vote for Hillary Clinton), and then he just needs these four rust belt states. He doesn’t need Florida. He doesn’t need Colorado or Virginia. Just Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And that will put him over the top. This is how it will happen in November.

Let’s face it: Our biggest problem here isn’t Trump – it’s Hillary. She is hugely unpopular — nearly 70% of all voters think she is untrustworthy and dishonest. She represents the old way of politics, not really believing in anything other than what can get you elected. That’s why she fights against gays getting married one moment, and the next she’s officiating a gay marriage. Young women are among her biggest detractors, which has to hurt considering it’s the sacrifices and the battles that Hillary and other women of her generation endured so that this younger generation would never have to be told by the Barbara Bushes of the world that they should just shut up and go bake some cookies. But the kids don’t like her, and not a day goes by that a millennial doesn’t tell me they aren’t voting for her. No Democrat, and certainly no independent, is waking up on November 8th excited to run out and vote for Hillary the way they did the day Obama became president or when Bernie was on the primary ballot. The enthusiasm just isn’t there. And because this election is going to come down to just one thing — who drags the most people out of the house and gets them to the polls — Trump right now is in the catbird seat.

They’re not going to vote for Trump; some will vote third party, but many will just stay home. Hillary Clinton is going to have to do something to give them a reason to support her — and picking a moderate, bland-o, middle of the road old white guy as her running mate is not the kind of edgy move that tells millenials that their vote is important to Hillary. Having two women on the ticket – that was an exciting idea. But then Hillary got scared and has decided to play it safe. This is just one example of how she is killing the youth vote.

And in the same way like when you’re standing on the edge of Niagara Falls and your mind wonders for a moment what would that feel like to go over that thing, a lot of people are going to love being in the position of puppetmaster and plunking down for Trump just to see what that might look like. Remember back in the ‘90s when the people of Minnesota elected a professional wrestler as their governor? They didn’t do this because they’re stupid or thought that Jesse Ventura was some sort of statesman or political intellectual. They did so just because they could. Minnesota is one of the smartest states in the country. It is also filled with people who have a dark sense of humor — and voting for Ventura was their version of a good practical joke on a sick political system. This is going to happen again with Trump.

Until now, I had never read or heard any of what Micheal Moore said here. But I could not agree more with him and it bears repeating yet once again. The democratic party would be well advised to listen to Moore. Thanks for sharing Jolly.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Yeah, I know you hate percentages...

?

by your numbers LBJ convinced 37.7% of the people to come vote for him, whereas HRC convinced 28% of the voters to vote for her

Again, incorrect. The potential (the ability; the proper condition) for either candidate to garner more votes than either actually did was equal. Iow, LBJ and HRC could have garnered more votes than they actually did. Therefore the only thing that matters--in regard to what we're talking about--is how many votes did each one actually get. I.e., the "raw" number of votes.

This is the relevant sequence of questions: Could LBJ have garnered more votes than he actually got? Yes. Ok, then how many did he get? 43 Million.
Now same question to HRC: Could HRC have garnered more votes than she actually got? Yes. Ok, then how many did she get? 65 Million.
Record set by HRC.

If necessary, then a follow up question as to whether or not LBJ could have--had the proper conditions to--garner 65 million votes might be necessary, but the answer to that question is likewise, yes. The conditions were such that LBJ could have garnered as many raw votes as Hillary garnered. He did not, however.

The actual number of potential voters is only necessary to establish whether or not the conditions in both elections were proper such that either candidate could garner more votes than they actually got. Once you've established that (as we have), then it's all about the raw numbers.

If there were ever a situation where, say, there were only 40 million total potential votes and one candidate got all 40 million, then and only then would there be some question as to how many more they could have garnered if there were a larger pool of potential voters, but this is not the condition we have here.

I’m not sure why you are quibbling over HRC’s popular vote win.

Because it is the true measure of the political leaning of the American people as a whole and proves that there was no ideological shift to the right (as so many on the right and a few on the left keep trying to assert) as well as the fact that Hillary Clinton was the best candidate for the Dems. She won the election (but lost the Presidency due to a complicated and unprecedented series of events).

There literally is no better measure of whether or not you are the best candidate if you win the vote.

That is all nice, so let me know when you fix the US Constitution.

I will, but that did not counter the argument.

And my point was that HRC wasn’t facing some sort of super villain opponent that had magical powers.

Wasn't she? She was facing the unprecedented power of a new medium, cyber-offensive from Russia; the GOP attack machine (that had been in full operation against her nonstop for the past thirty years at least); the insidiousness of racism that had nothing to do with her and the impossible to combat sexism that had everything to do with her at the same time it ultimately had nothing to do with her personally (or her policies); and she was facing the "super villainy" of an opponent that was allowed to campaign unfettered and unchallenged because Hillary was forced to contend with a zombie civil war attack from the Sanders campaign--that was likewise Russian fueled--and wasted extremely valuable time and money and focus away from the nonstop attacks Trump was pumping out as well.

IMPOV, she wasn't.

Ok. She very clearly was, however, facing tremendous obstacles--some measurable, some maybe never--and won in spite of them all, so your pov is untenable.

And it is interesting that you have yet point out anything that is of HRC's own making

I am not in the habit of pointing out irrelevant red herrings. What would be the point? Shall we discuss all of Sanders' personal foibles as a measure of why he lost the primaries? How would you propose we quantify/qualify such a subjective thing?

Race and sexism and the Comey effect, etc., can all be at least partially quantifiable. Whether someone didn't like Hillary's pantsuits or she rubbed someone the wrong way? Not interested unless it is backed up by some sort of tangible significance? Plus there is--once again--the fact that she won, so her likability has already been measured and it passed the only test there is to actually measure such a thing; a vote.

Let's put it this way, if the .02% in the three states had voted for Hillary--as expected by almost everyone--then we would never be having any such conversation and no one would ever be talking about anything she did (or did not do). It simply would have been a win and done. Yet nothing is fundamentally different other than a minuscule percentage swing. Again, a cough could provoke such a swing.

As you have tossed this numeric around more than a few times, could explain where this ‘0.02% vote differential’ percentage derives from, as I’m not figuring out the math behind it?

Shit, it's been a while. I believe I got that number from the fact that there was a 77,000 vote differential that resulted in the EC swing to Trump. There were 200 million registered voters in 2016. 77K divided by 200M actually comes out to be .03%. So what lost Hillary the Presidency was a vote differential of just .03%.

Yes, I know, the vote differential if one is only taking into account the total number of votes cast in the three states (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan) is more like 2%. Maybe over the years I've conflated the two? Regardless, the point remains that it's a very small percentage that cost her the Presidency.

 

[funinspace]

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Again, incorrect. The potential (the ability; the proper condition) for either candidate to garner more votes than either actually did was equal. Iow, LBJ and HRC could have garnered more votes than they actually did. Therefore the only thing that matters--in regard to what we're talking about--is how many votes did each one actually get. I.e., the "raw" number of votes.

This is the relevant sequence of questions: Could LBJ have garnered more votes than he actually got? Yes. Ok, then how many did he get? 43 Million.
Now same question to HRC: Could HRC have garnered more votes than she actually got? Yes. Ok, then how many did she get? 65 Million.
Record set by HRC.

If necessary, then a follow up question as to whether or not LBJ could have--had the proper conditions to--garner 65 million votes might be necessary, but the answer to that question is likewise, yes. The conditions were such that LBJ could have garnered as many raw votes as Hillary garnered. He did not, however.

The actual number of potential voters is only necessary to establish whether or not the conditions in both elections were proper such that either candidate could garner more votes than they actually got. Once you've established that (as we have), then it's all about the raw numbers.

If there were ever a situation where, say, there were only 40 million total potential votes and one candidate got all 40 million, then and only then would there be some question as to how many more they could have garnered if there were a larger pool of potential voters, but this is not the condition we have here.

Like I said...".but have fun with your big 'numbers are important' analysis, as obviously neither of us is getting thru to the other...". Personally I find your mantra of HRC having the "garnering the second largest turn-out in US history" numeric to be trivial, even if still true.

I’m not sure why you are quibbling over HRC’s popular vote win.

Because it is the true measure of the political leaning of the American people as a whole and proves that there was no ideological shift to the right (as so many on the right and a few on the left keep trying to assert) as well as the fact that Hillary Clinton was the best candidate for the Dems. She won the election (but lost the Presidency due to a complicated and unprecedented series of events).

There literally is no better measure of whether or not you are the best candidate if you win the vote.

That is all nice, so let me know when you fix the US Constitution.

I will, but that did not counter the argument.

An argument I never counter-argued; but sure keep belaboring the point... But your arguing arose in response to me saying this:
"Yes, she actually did relatively well considering that it is rare for the same party to retain the Presidency after an 8 year run. And even though Pres. Obama didn’t have anything significant to do with the root causes of financial crisis, he and HRC certainly had political headwinds due to the slow recovery over the preceding 8 years. At the same time, she was battling against a buffoon who had to claw his way thru the Repug primary."

And my point was that HRC wasn’t facing some sort of super villain opponent that had magical powers.

Wasn't she? She was facing the unprecedented power of a new medium, cyber-offensive from Russia; the GOP attack machine (that had been in full operation against her nonstop for the past thirty years at least); the insidiousness of racism that had nothing to do with her and the impossible to combat sexism that had everything to do with her at the same time it ultimately had nothing to do with her personally (or her policies); and she was facing the "super villainy" of an opponent that was allowed to campaign unfettered and unchallenged because Hillary was forced to contend with a zombie civil war attack from the Sanders campaign--that was likewise Russian fueled--and wasted extremely valuable time and money and focus away from the nonstop attacks Trump was pumping out as well.

IMPOV, she wasn't.

Ok. She very clearly was, however, facing tremendous obstacles--some measurable, some maybe never--and won in spite of them all, so your pov is untenable.

And it is interesting that you have yet point out anything that is of HRC's own making

I am not in the habit of pointing out irrelevant red herrings. What would be the point? Shall we discuss all of Sanders' personal foibles as a measure of why he lost the primaries? How would you propose we quantify/qualify such a subjective thing?

My pov is untenable, but Sander's foibles are subjective...oky doky. Maybe you should start a HRC destroyed by Sanders thread...

Race and sexism and the Comey effect, etc., can all be at least partially quantifiable. Whether someone didn't like Hillary's pantsuits or she rubbed someone the wrong way? Not interested unless it is backed up by some sort of tangible significance? Plus there is--once again--the fact that she won, so her likability has already been measured and it passed the only test there is to actually measure such a thing; a vote.

The 'Comey effect' (which was real and wrongly handled by him), could not have happened w/o HRC's ridiculous and extensive use of a her private email server while Sec. of State. But yeah, that is probably an untenable and irrelevant red herring...

Let's put it this way, if the .02% in the three states had voted for Hillary--as expected by almost everyone--then we would never be having any such conversation and no one would ever be talking about anything she did (or did not do). It simply would have been a win and done. Yet nothing is fundamentally different other than a minuscule percentage swing. Again, a cough could provoke such a swing.

As you have tossed this numeric around more than a few times, could explain where this ‘0.02% vote differential’ percentage derives from, as I’m not figuring out the math behind it?

Shit, it's been a while. I believe I got that number from the fact that there was a 77,000 vote differential that resulted in the EC swing to Trump. There were 200 million registered voters in 2016. 77K divided by 200M actually comes out to be .03%. So what lost Hillary the Presidency was a vote differential of just .03%.

Yes, I know, the vote differential if one is only taking into account the total number of votes cast in the three states (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan) is more like 2%. Maybe over the years I've conflated the two? Regardless, the point remains that it's a very small percentage that cost her the Presidency.

Ah, ok thanks. Either way, the 55k (or 77k from the data I see) is hardly the only votes to ponder when considering HRC’s loss and/or Don the Con’s win. Even within these 3 states it is more complicated. The Libertarian Party (LP), on average only gets about 1% of the national vote each Presidential election cycle. In 2016, they pulled a big 3.27% nationally, well over the Green Party’s Stein’s fairly impressive 1%. In those 3 states where it was down to 55k (or 77k), many voters clearly went to the LP, depressing Don the Con’s win. Unless someone wants to argue that all those extra LP votes would have naturally gone to HRC? So there are another 340,000 votes that also mattered… Sure it is still not a huge percentage, but the point is that I think that what cost HRC the Presidency is more than just that.

Below is the data from the references regarding the number of LP votes in the last 2 election cycles.
State 2016 2012
Pennsylvania 146k 49k
Wisconsin 107k 20k
Michigan 172k 8k
Refs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016#Results_by_state
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2012#Results_by_state

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

The Libertarian Party (LP), on average only gets about 1% of the national vote each Presidential election cycle. In 2016, they pulled a big 3.27% nationally, well over the Green Party’s Stein’s fairly impressive 1%. In those 3 states where it was down to 55k (or 77k), many voters clearly went to the LP, depressing Don the Con’s win. Unless someone wants to argue that all those extra LP votes would have naturally gone to HRC?

Well, let’s break that down. As you pointed out, the LP typically gets about 1% every election cycle, so we can set that aside as a baseline. So we’d be looking at the outlier that seemed to be unique to 2016, or about 2.27% of his numbers up for grabs in regard to any swing toward Johnson. Do we have any indication as to the breakdown of his support? There is this from November 26 from CNN:

It's impossible to know how an election could have gone under hypothetical scenarios, but the Johnson campaign regularly said they thought they were pulling support equally from would-be Trump supporters and would-be Clinton voters. Stein's campaign, meanwhile, made a constant, explicit appeal to disenchanted Democrats and former supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

If Johnson and Stein weren't in the race, it's also possible many of their supporters may have stayed home. But if about half of Johnson's supporters would have voted for Clinton over Trump, and if most of Stein's supporters broke for the Democrats, the electoral map would have been decidedly different.

And there was this from FiveThirtyEight back in July of 2016 (i.e., long before the election, but still relevant to this question):

The majority of pollsters (12) have Clinton’s margin over Trump shrinking when at least one third-party candidate is included. The difference in margins, however, varies among pollsters, and a few, such as Ipsos, have Clinton’s lead rising by the tiniest of bits when at least Johnson is included. Overall, including third-party candidates takes about 1 percentage point away from Clinton’s margin, on average.

We can argue about the significance of a single percentage point. It’s not a very big deal when Clinton is leading by 5.5 percentage points in the FiveThirtyEight national polling average and is projected to win the national vote by 6.3 percentage points in the FiveThirtyEight polls-only model. (Note that our model prefers the versions of polls that include Johnson. Otherwise, Clinton’s advantage would be slightly larger.1) The discrepancy could, however, become an issue if the race becomes tighter.
...
Johnson looks especially likely to peel votes from Clinton and Trump because he will probably achieve ballot access in all 50 states, which is unusual for a non-major-party candidate.

And then there was this from CNN in August of 2016:

Way down in the crosstabs of CNN's latest presidential poll, we learn how voters who preferred Bernie Sanders to Hillary Clinton say they're most likely to vote in November. A clear majority, 69 percent, favor Clinton. Jill Stein of the Green Party is in second place, with 13 percent. Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party is third, at 10 percent. Donald Trump brings up the rear, with just three percent of the total—the same as "other."

If we use the numbers from the primaries as an indication of how many Sanders supporters there were, then we’re talking about 10% of 13 million or 1.3 million Sanders’ supporters potentially throwing their votes away on a third party as a protest against Clinton, and about half that would go to Johnson, or around 650,000 votes. That’s just from the Sanders’ supporters. Harder to discern would be among “independents” or other undecided Dems that got swayed by the Comey effect (or racism/sexism).

So, iow, yes, there is definitively evidence indicating that votes that would have otherwise gone to Clinton went instead to Johnson (and not necessarily at Trump’s expense).

Sure it is still not a huge percentage, but the point is that I think that what cost HRC the Presidency is more than just that.

As do I as I have repeatedly pointed out. There were many many issues involved, including, as you noted, her emails, which actually wasn’t a real issue; it was a manufactured one. There was never any problem—legally or other—with her using her own email servers. They were actually more secure than State department servers. Trump/GOP/Russians and Sanders bots no doubt fueled by same turned a non-issue into an issue, however, but I’m not sure how that blame gets put on Clinton.

“She should have known better” is basically the same thing as saying a rape victim shouldn’t have worn that dress or gone into that seedy bar or the like. The fact of the matter is that a mole hill got turned into a mountain, but that’s not the mole hill’s fault.

ETA: There has also been a LOT made of Clinton’s likeability,something I dismissed as a red herring previously and was probably being a little too cavalier about and for that I apologize. But here’s the problem with it—aside from the fact that, again, she won the vote, so that alone proves she was likeable enough to win—had Sanders behaved like a sane man and bowed out when he was supposed to (by that I mean according to rational logic based on the numbers and the fact that he could not possibly have won) in May, then Clinton/us/Dems would have had a good six months pitting her against Trump, instead of what we had which was a bitter civil war instigated by a zombie campaign that never rose above more than about 6% of the Democratic base to his favor.

Iow, and once again, a very small percentage that in previous elections would not have had any impact, now, due to the weaponization of a brand new medium (social), that combination of internal and external attacks against Clinton only exacerbated her negative associations.

She was hated by the right and hated by the radical left (secretly fueled by the right and by the Russians), but only a very small percentage (speaking of making mountains out of mole hills).

Had that civil war not existed—and instead the unity we saw WAAAAAYYY too late and only after the ninth hour—it is more than likely Hillary’s likeability would have significantly increased, particualrly in stark relief against Trump if she had those months to focus exclusively on the real problem.

And that’s why I don’t think focusing on her personally is anything but a red herring. The politicized hatred of a radical fringe that has always been rightfully marginalized, was turned into a non-stop blitzkrieg from what appeared to be her own party, but, again, as with the primaries, the votes don’t lie. Rhetoric does, but votes do not.

 

[funinspace]

Well, let’s break that down. As you pointed out, the LP typically gets about 1% every election cycle, so we can set that aside as a baseline. So we’d be looking at the outlier that seemed to be unique to 2016, or about 2.27% of his numbers up for grabs in regard to any swing toward Johnson. Do we have any indication as to the breakdown of his support? There is this from November 26 from CNN:


And there was this from FiveThirtyEight back in July of 2016 (i.e., long before the election, but still relevant to this question):

The majority of pollsters (12) have Clinton’s margin over Trump shrinking when at least one third-party candidate is included. The difference in margins, however, varies among pollsters, and a few, such as Ipsos, have Clinton’s lead rising by the tiniest of bits when at least Johnson is included. Overall, including third-party candidates takes about 1 percentage point away from Clinton’s margin, on average.

We can argue about the significance of a single percentage point. It’s not a very big deal when Clinton is leading by 5.5 percentage points in the FiveThirtyEight national polling average and is projected to win the national vote by 6.3 percentage points in the FiveThirtyEight polls-only model. (Note that our model prefers the versions of polls that include Johnson. Otherwise, Clinton’s advantage would be slightly larger.1) The discrepancy could, however, become an issue if the race becomes tighter.
...
Johnson looks especially likely to peel votes from Clinton and Trump because he will probably achieve ballot access in all 50 states, which is unusual for a non-major-party candidate.

And then there was this from CNN in August of 2016:

Way down in the crosstabs of CNN's latest presidential poll, we learn how voters who preferred Bernie Sanders to Hillary Clinton say they're most likely to vote in November. A clear majority, 69 percent, favor Clinton. Jill Stein of the Green Party is in second place, with 13 percent. Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party is third, at 10 percent. Donald Trump brings up the rear, with just three percent of the total—the same as "other."

If we use the numbers from the primaries as an indication of how many Sanders supporters there were, then we’re talking about 10% of 13 million or 1.3 million Sanders’ supporters potentially throwing their votes away on a third party as a protest against Clinton, and about half that would go to Johnson, or around 650,000 votes. That’s just from the Sanders’ supporters. Harder to discern would be among “independents” or other undecided Dems that got swayed by the Comey effect (or racism/sexism).

So, iow, yes, there is definitively evidence indicating that votes that would have otherwise gone to Clinton went instead to Johnson (and not necessarily at Trump’s expense).

Well, I have to say that it surprises me that more LP votes would have bled off of HRC, but I guess I accepted what has been a steady stream of argument on this board that most LP voters are barely different than the Repugs/conservatives. So I'll concede in less than a week of debate

Sure it is still not a huge percentage, but the point is that I think that what cost HRC the Presidency is more than just that.

As do I as I have repeatedly pointed out. There were many many issues involved, including, as you noted, her emails, which actually wasn’t a real issue; it was a manufactured one. There was never any problem—legally or other—with her using her own email servers. They were actually more secure than State department servers. Trump/GOP/Russians and Sanders bots no doubt fueled by same turned a non-issue into an issue, however, but I’m not sure how that blame gets put on Clinton.

Whether or not HRC’s personal/private email server was more or less secure than State Dept. servers is irrelevant to the issue. IMO, the email issue was quite real, and here actions at a minimum quite inappropriate. I have spent the last 20 years working in IT. I have held a secret clearance in the past. I currently hold a recognized IT security certification. I have had annual security refresher training regarding the handling of sensitive information (PII, PHI, PCI) for more times than I can remember. And everything from my background screams that such actions were quite wrong, w/o even going into whether or not it was criminal. The higher up one is, the more one can often do w/o getting punished. But ordinary workers could never have gotten away with what HRC, did email wise.

ETA: There has also been a LOT made of Clinton’s likeability,something I dismissed as a red herring previously and was probably being a little too cavalier about and for that I apologize.

Good article and NP.

But here’s the problem with it—aside from the fact that, again, she won the vote, so that alone proves she was likeable enough to win—had Sanders behaved like a sane man and bowed out when he was supposed to (by that I mean according to rational logic based on the numbers and the fact that he could not possibly have won) in May, then Clinton/us/Dems would have had a good six months pitting her against Trump, instead of what we had which was a bitter civil war instigated by a zombie campaign that never rose above more than about 6% of the Democratic base to his favor.

Well, Bernie did only concede about a month after HRC conceded to Obama. But yeah, he probably should have done the right thing earlier than even HRC had due to the numbers. And obviously the Russian meddling is real.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

I am not convinced that more time would have helped Clinton against Trump. It may just have given him more time to work against her. There was not much she could do to dissociate herself from the establishment image she had projected for so long, while facing a populist in a time when so many were sick of politics as usual. Picking somebody like Elizabeth Warren instead of the milk toast corporate democrat she picked would have helped though. It would have appealed to the Bernie voters and independents who saw Hillary as a corporate shill, myself included, and it would have also appealed to the Feminist pro-woman crowd as it would have been a 2 woman ticket. It also wouldn't have been likely to have shifted the media's presumption of her winning the election, which also kept people from bothering to go out and vote for her. A do-over I do think she would have won, but she was so strongly predicted to win that without a crystal ball a lot of people saw no reason to go vote for something who was merely the slightly better of two evils to them.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

IMO, the email issue was quite real, and here actions at a minimum quite inappropriate. I have spent the last 20 years working in IT.

The issue of her emails was conclusively put to rest by Powell’s statements. The problem was, of course, that Sanders’ supporters, the Trump team (both fueled by the Russians) and the FBI in particular—in spite of having already closed the matter, only to have Comey re-open it in a grossly inappropriate manner, calculated, imo and ironically as it turned out, to hurt Clinton’s chances—continued to ignore that fact and instead kept it alive.

As to the comparison of Hillary to Obama, HRC and Obama were always neck and neck (and at one point HRC was ahead in raw votes). At no point was Sanders ahead of Clinton and by the NY primaries (iow, May) it was over for Sanders, yet for no legitimate reason they stayed and it predicable escalated into a bitterly divisive civil war.

If memory serves, the conceit at the time was to force her “more to the left,” which, again was ridiculous as it was Sanders that had actually moved to the right to join her in the left of center, so even the implausible excuse to stay in the primaries held no water and only further served to demonize Hillary. He co-opted her platform; bid a dollar more than she did; never had a chance of winning; refused to get out; and then when he finally did, it was as if he were the winner deigning to sully himself with her presence for the sake of finally going after what was the whole point to begin with (stopping Trump).

Again I would ask you to simply imagine how radically different the 2016 election would have been had Sanders got out when he should have (in May). There would have been no internal civil war; no use of Sanders by the Russians or the GOP; and an entire half a year of Dems fully rallying around Clinton, which in turn would have given Clinton’s team more than enough time and effort to counter any and all remaining personality issues precisely because they would have had no one but Trump to compare her to. As it was, the Republicans were having a field day watching Democrats shit all over Clinton; doing their job for them, so by the time of the general, Hillary was seen as being equal to or worse than Trump.

And not due to anything she had done; due entirely to the attacks against her from within her own party exclusively through the minority radical fringe of the Sanders camp amplified to make it seem as if it were a “movement” and “revolution” when in fact it was nothing more than about 5%.

 

[LordKiran]

Well, let’s break that down. As you pointed out, the LP typically gets about 1% every election cycle, so we can set that aside as a baseline. So we’d be looking at the outlier that seemed to be unique to 2016, or about 2.27% of his numbers up for grabs in regard to any swing toward Johnson. Do we have any indication as to the breakdown of his support? There is this from November 26 from CNN:



And there was this from FiveThirtyEight back in July of 2016 (i.e., long before the election, but still relevant to this question):

The majority of pollsters (12) have Clinton’s margin over Trump shrinking when at least one third-party candidate is included. The difference in margins, however, varies among pollsters, and a few, such as Ipsos, have Clinton’s lead rising by the tiniest of bits when at least Johnson is included. Overall, including third-party candidates takes about 1 percentage point away from Clinton’s margin, on average.

We can argue about the significance of a single percentage point. It’s not a very big deal when Clinton is leading by 5.5 percentage points in the FiveThirtyEight national polling average and is projected to win the national vote by 6.3 percentage points in the FiveThirtyEight polls-only model. (Note that our model prefers the versions of polls that include Johnson. Otherwise, Clinton’s advantage would be slightly larger.1) The discrepancy could, however, become an issue if the race becomes tighter.
...
Johnson looks especially likely to peel votes from Clinton and Trump because he will probably achieve ballot access in all 50 states, which is unusual for a non-major-party candidate.

And then there was this from CNN in August of 2016:

Way down in the crosstabs of CNN's latest presidential poll, we learn how voters who preferred Bernie Sanders to Hillary Clinton say they're most likely to vote in November. A clear majority, 69 percent, favor Clinton. Jill Stein of the Green Party is in second place, with 13 percent. Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party is third, at 10 percent. Donald Trump brings up the rear, with just three percent of the total—the same as "other."

If we use the numbers from the primaries as an indication of how many Sanders supporters there were, then we’re talking about 10% of 13 million or 1.3 million Sanders’ supporters potentially throwing their votes away on a third party as a protest against Clinton, and about half that would go to Johnson, or around 650,000 votes. That’s just from the Sanders’ supporters. Harder to discern would be among “independents” or other undecided Dems that got swayed by the Comey effect (or racism/sexism).

So, iow, yes, there is definitively evidence indicating that votes that would have otherwise gone to Clinton went instead to Johnson (and not necessarily at Trump’s expense).

Sure it is still not a huge percentage, but the point is that I think that what cost HRC the Presidency is more than just that.

As do I as I have repeatedly pointed out. There were many many issues involved, including, as you noted, her emails, which actually wasn’t a real issue; it was a manufactured one. There was never any problem—legally or other—with her using her own email servers. They were actually more secure than State department servers. Trump/GOP/Russians and Sanders bots no doubt fueled by same turned a non-issue into an issue, however, but I’m not sure how that blame gets put on Clinton.

“She should have known better” is basically the same thing as saying a rape victim shouldn’t have worn that dress or gone into that seedy bar or the like. The fact of the matter is that a mole hill got turned into a mountain, but that’s not the mole hill’s fault.

ETA: There has also been a LOT made of Clinton’s likeability,something I dismissed as a red herring previously and was probably being a little too cavalier about and for that I apologize. But here’s the problem with it—aside from the fact that, again, she won the vote, so that alone proves she was likeable enough to win—had Sanders behaved like a sane man and bowed out when he was supposed to (by that I mean according to rational logic based on the numbers and the fact that he could not possibly have won) in May, then Clinton/us/Dems would have had a good six months pitting her against Trump, instead of what we had which was a bitter civil war instigated by a zombie campaign that never rose above more than about 6% of the Democratic base to his favor.

Iow, and once again, a very small percentage that in previous elections would not have had any impact, now, due to the weaponization of a brand new medium (social), that combination of internal and external attacks against Clinton only exacerbated her negative associations.

She was hated by the right and hated by the radical left (secretly fueled by the right and by the Russians), but only a very small percentage (speaking of making mountains out of mole hills).

Had that civil war not existed—and instead the unity we saw WAAAAAYYY too late and only after the ninth hour—it is more than likely Hillary’s likeability would have significantly increased, particualrly in stark relief against Trump if she had those months to focus exclusively on the real problem.

And that’s why I don’t think focusing on her personally is anything but a red herring. The politicized hatred of a radical fringe that has always been rightfully marginalized, was turned into a non-stop blitzkrieg from what appeared to be her own party, but, again, as with the primaries, the votes don’t lie. Rhetoric does, but votes do not.

I don't think the popular vote is a particularly good metric for likeability, given that a lot more goes into your vote than a candidates particular personality. Hell Trump's election should be enough to tell you that. I also think that had she played her campaign smarter and made meaningful compromises to the far left in the moment and not just lofty campaign promises for the future, she could have seen a greater turn out with particularly younger voters that could have been enough to secure her win, given the margins. Even just putting someone like E.W. in a cabinet position might have been enough.

 

[prideandfall]

Again I would ask you to simply imagine how radically different the 2016 election would have been had Sanders got out when he should have (in May). There would have been no internal civil war; no use of Sanders by the Russians or the GOP; and an entire half a year of Dems fully rallying around Clinton, which in turn would have given Clinton’s team more than enough time and effort to counter any and all remaining personality issues precisely because they would have had no one but Trump to compare her to. As it was, the Republicans were having a field day watching Democrats shit all over Clinton; doing their job for them, so by the time of the general, Hillary was seen as being equal to or worse than Trump.

And not due to anything she had done; due entirely to the attacks against her from within her own party exclusively through the minority radical fringe of the Sanders camp amplified to make it seem as if it were a “movement” and “revolution” when in fact it was nothing more than about 5%.

i've greatly appreciated most of your contributions to this thread but on this i have to disagree with you, because you're implying there would have been a difference where i don't believe there would have been any.

having a democrat for 8 years pretty much meant the republican (whoever it was) would win no matter any other factors, but add to that the candidate being pure distilled unchecked Republicanism made flesh, it was a done deal before it even started.
trump is the greatest republican candidate there has been in at least a generation (in terms of being a candidate that represents what republican voters want) and clinton is a quite decent career politician with a solid history of being generally Democrat in an overall non-threatening way - even if the pendulum of elections wasn't pointed to the (R) for this turn, there's just no realistic way to overcome those odds given the particular strain of stupidity democratic voters are weak to.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

I am not convinced that more time would have helped Clinton against Trump.

Don’t forget that it wasn’t just “more time”; it was that there would have been no Dem civil war and no use of Sanders bots by the Russians and the GOP. It would have also meant months of team Clinton focusing on positioning her against Trump, rather than defending her against Sanders.

There was not much she could do to dissociate herself from the establishment image she had projected for so long.

There would have been, but then she wouldn’t have needed to since that too was a Sanders bludgeon. If Sanders had got out when he should have, then the only people barking about the “establishment” would have been Trump deplorables, giving the Clinton team more than enough time and resources to address such framing. As it was, her own party was barking at her as an “establishment” whore, so once again, the Sanders faction was doing the work of Republicans.

while facing a populist in a time when so many were sick of politics as usual.

No Dems were “sick of politics as usual” until Sanders made that narrative up. Millennials, most definitely, did not even know what politics was until the “Occupy Wall Street” nonsense and then it was forgotten until Occupy convinced Sanders to run and fanned those already dead flames. The notion of “the establishment” was completely manufactured by the Trump team and then amplified by the Sanders team.

To this day people still call Clinton a “corporate whore” (or “corporate shill”)—Dems, no less—only whenever pressed on what that’s based, the only thing they can come up with are GOP lies/attack strategies, like the fact that she was on the speaking circuit. The insinuation (always an insinuation) is that the payments were somehow payoffs. As if no one has ever heard of being paid for giving a speech before.

That’s what is the most insidious about the attacks against Hillary. They are/were being created by Republicans, but Dems were hurling them too.

Picking somebody like Elizabeth Warren instead of the milk toast corporate democrat she picked would have helped though.

I agree that Kane may not have been the best choice, but then that’s what everyone said about Gore, too. As for choosing Warren, that would have been bold, but look at the fact that sexism played a significant role in her downfall and simply double down on that. Again, she won the election, but lost the Presidency. So her choices were correct.

It would have appealed to the Bernie voters and independents who saw Hillary as a corporate shill, myself included,

Well, there you go. And as to appealing to Bernie voters, no. There should never have been a need to “appeal” to an irrelevant radial fringe. That was the problem. In all other elections, there has always been—on either end of the America political spectrum—a good 15% that bark at the moon. In THIS election—due exclusively to the new “social” medium—that fringe was moved into the center instead of simply ignored as it usually and rightfully was.

The mouse that roared as it were, on both sides. That was what Putin, in particular knew, but also Sanders—who hired Obama’s social media team, Revolution Messaging (I think is their name)—and Trump, with Cambridge Analytica. This is not insignificant; this is the first time the new media was weaponized by all concerned. Obama used it for outreach, but that wasn’t even scratching its service in the way it was used just two years later by all of the above, except, ironically, for Clinton’s team. They did not do nearly as well as they should have with their social campaign, but that’s largely due to the fact that negative and/or fake memes travel the farthest. As someone forced into a defensive posture from all sides (including her own), their use of social was defensive.

That’s also what I mean by what resources could have been directed against Trump that instead were wasted in defense against Sanders.

and it would have also appealed to the Feminist pro-woman crowd as it would have been a 2 woman ticket.

Well, again, being a woman didn’t seem to help Hillary, so I’m not sure why two women would have done any better and it likely would have resulted in even more sexist defections, so it’s hard to say whether picking up one wouldn’t also drag down another.

It also wouldn't have been likely to have shifted the media's presumption of her winning the election, which also kept people from bothering to go out and vote for her.

And that number is never mentioned, btw. We still have little idea of exaclty how many people—in blue states particularly—didn’t bother to get off their asses and vote because they thought Hillary was a lock so why bother? What little evidence does exist, however, suggests that there were millions of such apathy voters, which, once again adds to the post-mortem of exaclty where America was ideologically that is not accurately reflected in the outcome.

A do-over I do think she would have won, but she was so strongly predicted to win that without a crystal ball a lot of people saw no reason to go vote for something who was merely the slightly better of two evils to them.

That too, but again, that narrative was entirely fostered by the Sanders camp. Republicans pushed it as well, but then they have ALWAYS pushed it. What was horrific was the fact that Sanders pounced on it and Dems ran with it, doing Republican work for them.

I always thought we were smarter than that, but, again, this situation was unique in that a marginalized 5% got amplified into seeming like it was a “revolution” when in fact it was nowhere near such a thing. Still isn’t, btw; but the rhetoric dies hard in spite of the votes proving its zombie status.

 

[funinspace]

IMO, the email issue was quite real, and here actions at a minimum quite inappropriate. I have spent the last 20 years working in IT.

The issue of her emails was conclusively put to rest by Powell’s statements.

LOL…that article hardly puts the issue to rest. Two wrongs do not make a right. Powell can say all he wants, but he was also wrong. Additionally, many rules of political play shift when it becomes the top game of the Presidency. Per the very article:

The senior State Department official testifying at the hearing, Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy, said he was not aware that Powell had used personal electronic devices in the secure office spaces at State, but might not have been aware since Kennedy was not in his current job then.

Asked if his predecessor would have allowed Powell to use a personal device in the secure area, Kennedy said: "He would not have."

House Oversight Committee ranking Democrat Rep. Elijah Cummings, had this to say from the article:

"I have tremendous respect for Secretary Powell and his decades of service to our nation, despite the poor judgment shown in this email,"

Another article stating the obvious that Powell and HRC were in fact breaking the rules:
https://www.wired.com/2016/09/powell-email-shows-clinton-hardly-first-break-security-rules/

A friendly message from Colin Powell detailing how he had used his own unapproved devices and private email during his time as head of the State Department years earlier. The evidence hardly excuses Clinton for her own mishandling of sensitive, sometimes-classified data that FBI director James Comey has called "extremely careless," though not criminal. Instead, it shows how heads of government agencies have flouted tech security rules for years, long before Clinton's email troubles became a heated campaign issue. As anyone who has worked as an IT administrator knows: Powerful people do what they want with technology, even if it breaks security rules.

Further points about HRC's extensive and near exclusive use of a private email server:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...lary-clintons-email-did-she-follow-all-rules/

It would have been a violation of the NARA's rules in the Code of Federal Regulations for Clinton to use personal email exclusively, Metcalfe said. The code requires federal agencies to make and preserve records that duly document agency activity, so that they are readily available when needed -- such as for FOIA requests or congressional inquiries. Using personal email exclusively is contrary to proper record preservation.

"Anyone at NARA would have said you can’t use a personal email account for all of your official business," said Metcalfe, who held his position in part during former President Bill Clinton’s administration.

Had Clinton used a @state.gov email address, every email sent and received would have been archived in the State Department system. Clinton, who served from 2009 to 2013, has argued that her emails were archived in the system because she was in the habit of sending them to other government employees with .gov email addresses.

However, experts said this defense is insufficient. Under this practice, the State Department records management system would have captured emails from Clinton to a State Department employee, but it would not necessarily capture emails from Clinton to government employees in other departments or non-government employees, said John Wonderlich, policy director for the Sunlight Foundation, which advocates for government transparency.
<snip>
However, in 2005 (before Clinton took office), a State Department manual said information that is "sensitive but unclassified" -- a broad category that covers anything from meeting schedules, to visa applications, to ordinary emails to other federal agencies -- should be emailed through servers authorized by the department.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Again I would ask you to simply imagine how radically different the 2016 election would have been had Sanders got out when he should have (in May). There would have been no internal civil war; no use of Sanders by the Russians or the GOP; and an entire half a year of Dems fully rallying around Clinton, which in turn would have given Clinton’s team more than enough time and effort to counter any and all remaining personality issues precisely because they would have had no one but Trump to compare her to. As it was, the Republicans were having a field day watching Democrats shit all over Clinton; doing their job for them, so by the time of the general, Hillary was seen as being equal to or worse than Trump.

And not due to anything she had done; due entirely to the attacks against her from within her own party exclusively through the minority radical fringe of the Sanders camp amplified to make it seem as if it were a “movement” and “revolution” when in fact it was nothing more than about 5%.

i've greatly appreciated most of your contributions to this thread but on this i have to disagree with you

As I have appreciated yours and disagreed

because you're implying there would have been a difference where i don't believe there would have been any.

Not just implying it. There absolutely would have been a difference, because there would have been no internal divisiveness constantly being amplified. The focus would have been entirely on the goal; attacking Trump.

having a democrat for 8 years pretty much meant the republican (whoever it was) would win no matter any other factors

True.

but add to that the candidate being pure distilled unchecked Republicanism made flesh, it was a done deal before it even started.

If that were true, then there would have been no need for the Republicans to cheat so brazenly or for Trump to enlist (or be enlisted by) the Russians. As it was—once again, which is why it must constantly be repeated—Clinton won, so in spite of all of the odds she still beat him.

trump is the greatest republican candidate there has been in at least a generation (in terms of being a candidate that represents what republican voters want) and clinton is a quite decent career politician with a solid history of being generally Democrat in an overall non-threatening way - even if the pendulum of elections wasn't pointed to the (R) for this turn, there's just no realistic way to overcome those odds given the particular strain of stupidity democratic voters are weak to.

Well, ok, but, again, she won, so she did overcome those odds “given the particular strain of stupidity” etc.

What happened to deny her the presidency in spite of winning the election is a different matter, but when it comes to the VOTE—which is the proper measure—your position isn’t supported. I don’t mean that in a snarky way; it’s just a fact.

There is, I believe, an odd psychology around winning/losing. Hence my foot race analogy. We tend to think that if she isn’t President that she therefore LOST (writ large), when in fact, due to the anachronism and castrated nature of the vestigial EC, there are two separate conditions going on. There is the election (the “popular vote”); and then there is the EC process.

It is in fact possible—as we know—for Clinton to win the election, but lose the Presidency just as it is for Trump to lose the election, but win the Presidency. So the question always becomes, what are you trying to measure? In the case of your comments, whoever won the election (the vote) is what matters, because, again like the foot race analogy, you are talking about who is the faster runner, not who got the blue ribbon.